Our Story
WE NEEDED TO DO THINGS DIFFERENTLY
AND WE DID
By Henry Cohen
Founder
In 2013, a team of seasoned oil and gas operators got together with a group of energy investors to acquire a package of Legacy Oil and Gas wells in Alberta and Saskatchewan. Over the subsequent few years, with successful acquisitions and drilling, the company grew to 50 employees producing more than 2,500 boe/d. The team had extensive experience through all levels of operations, management and field work, in companies such as Encana, Talisman, Amoco, Penn West among many others.
While Legacy Assets can be a great business, little did we know that the next decade would be among the toughest in the industry’s history, with low commodity prices, wide differentials, restricted access to pipelines and a dramatically tougher regulatory structure.
We quickly realized that the cost structure and operating methods which had been around for decades needed to change. We knew that the operations teams knew the assets best, and the points of stress were no different in the field or in head office. Overall, we saw:
- Environmental risks and the limited ability to mitigate the impact of leaks.
- Knowledge of the business aspects of the industry, especially the challenges of economically operating low productivity Legacy Wells.
- Deep understanding of their assets’ technical and mechanical capabilities and limitations.
The first step was to initiate an incentive-based program where team members submitted ideas that would save money and increase revenues. The program was highly successful. In the first year, we improved margins by $3.50/boe.
To go further, we knew that well monitoring technology was the solution to improve overall operations. Thus began the search.
Learning came fast...
Problems at the site
As a team, we learned that the greatest opportunity for improved efficiencies was to further investigate the limitations. The issues that caused limitations were the need to have costly daily site visits, safety factors, and to improve environmental safeguards. The biggest limitation and source of risk by far was the data silence between site visits. Not knowing the health of our wells at any given moment was a concern; motors stopping, rod string malfunctioning, fluids not moving and of greatest impact, not knowing if there was a leak or where there was a leak.
Even though we were a small company, we spent close to a million dollars on leak remediation over five years. The limitations of our inability to properly diagnose our assets when it was most important, was critical to our operations, and it became our priority to resolve.
An effective, affordable remote monitoring solution was imperative.
LIMITATIONS
OF available SOLUTIONS
After trying numerous suppliers, we were no better off. Even with cameras, we still needed to visit each well daily. Why? Leaks are not always in a camera’s field of vision. We needed a more affordable way to cover the entire site, 24/7 in all visibility conditions. We chose to invest in developing a new solution and founded REVIVAL Analytics.
We needed to do things differently,
AND RETHINK HOW WE MONITOR OUR WELLS
With ESG a key factor for oil companies, information vacuums are no longer acceptable. Technology, economics, and fiduciary obligations were converging to form a great new idea. Our team’s discovery sessions were eye opening. Present were field operators, production and electronics engineers, and management. We invited outside software and hardware specialists to help identify how far we could push our ideas, and if the technology was possible. Could we build a reliable solution that is affordable to install even on the lowest productivity assets? Could we apply the principles of Occam’s Razor, suggesting that the most direct and least complex solution is usually the best? Working together with these internal and external stakeholders provided us the path needed to design an innovative and affordable solution that met all our benchmarks for success.
from that experience,
The idea for REVIVAL was born.
Our objective was to build an IIoT monitoring and communications system that would allow an operator to confidently reduce the frequency of site visits. It needed to be smart enough to monitor all the critical points on a site and report incidents when they occur, but simple enough to be affordable for Legacy Wells. To build a solution that allowed operators to know what they really needed to know, when they needed to know it – 24/7.
Technology that provides continuous and autonomous leak detection was the most important requirement for our solution. It needed to detect, and report leaks without operator involvement.
Built by operators
For operators
After four years of R&D, numerous successful field trials, REVIVAL Analytics provides the industry with an affordable remote monitoring solution built by operators for operators.
The Team is lead by
Henry Cohen, CFA
Henry has 40 + years’ experience in local and global energy as an analyst and investment banker. He founded a $250 mm energy investment fund, leading to the 2010 establishment of a publicly traded natural gas producer. In 2013 he founded Bow River Energy, an oil and gas producer operating Legacy Wells, and identified the need for affordable, remote monitoring technology and data analysis appropriate for the legacy segment of the industry, leading to the creation of REVIVAL Analytics.
Valens D’Silva, P.Eng.
Valens has 18 + years’ experience working with technology companies in industrial personal safety, cellular devices, and industrial controls. Experienced in all aspects of development from ideation to product launch, his roles include, product development, department management and CTO of an engineering firm. His design and product development experience ranges from embedded software to cloud hosted applications
Steve Robins
Steve is a former publisher who evolved as a marketing consultant, in the tech and transportation sectors. He is the President of The Jellyfish Project, a national environmental non-profit. He holds a Certificate for Advocacy & Training of The United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals, and a Leadership Corp Certification from Climate Reality
Dr. Jamie Cohen
Jamie is a software programmer who has been instrumental in the development of REVIVAL’s hardware provisioning system for all of our remote monitoring devices. Jamie also oversees the development and management of our Mobile App and Desktop Portal. He has expertise in programming, app design, UX/UI, user databases, cloud computing and utilizing Microsoft Azure web services.
The Advisory Board
Dr. Edward Bogle, P.Geol. , ICD.D
Edward Bogle, Ph.D., P.Eng., ICD.D, Advisory Board – Dr. Bogle has 35 + years’ experience in the oil and gas industry, with executive positions at Talisman, Nexen and Compton Petroleum. Dr. Bogle served as the Executive in Residence at the Alberta Department of Energy. He has experience in finance and administration, portfolio and risk management, oil and gas exploration, new ventures, mergers and asset acquisition and the creation of new companies. He has served on numerous public and private boards.
Josh Caswell, P.Geol.
Josh has 20 + years’ experience in energy exploration, development, exploitation, and operational geology of conventional and resource plays. He developed his technical abilities at Renaissance Energy, Canadian Hunter, Petro-Canada, and Koch Exploration, before moving to start-up oil and gas companies. His work led to his extensive use of big data for scientific, operating, and financial applications.
Robert Dumaine, P.Eng.
Robert has 30 + years of technical and field operations experience, drilling, redeveloping mature oilfields, enhanced recovery, cost reduction, and production optimization in Western Canada. He started at Amoco, in on-site field operations, facility construction, and sour gas processing. Operations experience includes pipeline replacement/monitoring projects, development of facility integrity programs, operations risk management, and spill remediation.
Brad Paulgaard
Brad has 15 + years’ experience as the Area Foreman for oil and gas operations in Alberta and Saskatchewan, resolving a multitude of operating issues, whether they be downhole or surface, or budgeting and personnel management in the field. Brad is passionate about the oil and gas sector and enjoys learning every facet of the business.
Angie Stastook, P.Eng.
Angie has 15 + years’ experience in oil and gas operations, in the field and in head office. Her expertise includes production optimization, regulatory competency, project management, technical well design, horizontal drilling and completions, and operating cost reduction. She is a specialist in Asset Liability and ESG and has worked with large and small private E&P companies in Western Canada.